Summer Blooms- The Lessons I have learned

I recently came across this amazing piece written by Pearl S. Buck. It so beautifully describes how I feel and how I was feeling when I allowed my creativity to be smothered by my hand injury. I felt victimized and angry! I now have learned many lessons this long year and a half have taught me. These lessons were available all along, but as the Buddhist saying goes, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear". I have to quote James Taylor. I finally "looked up from my life". I see the great blessings in the volunteer work I have so passionately become involved in. I see that sculpting and creating are my life, but only part of it. There is room for more. I feel so much more purposeful in my life and less guilty about feeling self absorbed when I was only sculpting. I constantly looked for the greater purpose in my sculpting. My world has expanded and I feel richer for the experience of my hand injury. I have also learned to ask for help, and am still at a beginner's mind when it comes to listening to my body and pacing myself. I am getting better! I would not welcome the injury if I had a choice, but I am embracing the lessons it has brought to my life. Now let me share this poignant Buck piece that I so deeply relate to:

"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: a human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To her, a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create-so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, her very breath is cut off from her. She must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency she is not really alive unless she is creating"~Pearl S. Buck

I feel grateful to slowly be creating again!